“I get up in the evenin'
And I ain't got nothin' to say
I come home in the mornin'
I go to bed feelin' the same way
I ain't nothin' but tired
Man, I'm just tired and bored with myself
Hey there, baby, I could use just a little help”
Dancing in the Dark is a celebration of the human experience, and one that doesn’t diminish the absurdity and pain inherent in life. And the story behind it, which I’ll share at the end, is just as inspiring as the lyrics themselves.
But what inspired me to write this letter isn't the original, but this version of Dancing in the Dark by Jørgen Dahl Moe, which, given the pain and frustration bleeding through the lyrics, feels so much more appropriate. Please take two minutes to give it a listen (or shall I say, feel it). Consider it your meditation for today.
Words meant to be shouted with gristle and rasp, are sometimes but a whisper.
Remember That You Must Die
"Memento Mori," the Latin phrase meaning "remember that you must die," is a contemplation on mortality used by stoics for millennia, serving as a powerful reminder of life's impermanence. Realizing that all things must die can be an incredibly helpful device for reframing your experience in the present, because, well… this moment is all we truly have to experience.
The perception of time - its continuity, and often, permanence - is a force that binds us all to static concepts of self. It reinforces fears of change. It encourages attachments to achievement, failure, and material possessions that bind us further.
Remembering that you must die isn’t a morbid, pessimistic view of reality, but a celebration of these few fleeting moments we’re granted to experience before we pass. It's an extraordinary filter for personal priorities, allowing us to make immediate adjustments to how we spend our time, and what we give our attention to.
It's also a call to action - this is the moment of change, and it’s the moment of choice. Tomorrow is unwritten. And YOU are the boss of your own journey.
The God Who Cheated Death
The myth of Sisyphus has haunted me since I first heard it nearly 30 years ago. It haunted me early on for the same reason it’s become an allegory of existentialism - there is no greater challenge to the human mind than to choose happiness amidst hopeless conditions.
Or, put more poetically, to choose pain au chocolat when you’re given pain.
Camus challenged us to reinterpret this tale of a god condemned to an eternity of rolling a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down again as a microcosm of the human plight. And he challenged us to ‘imagine Sisyphus happy.’
Yet as myths and allegories go, there’s more than meets the eye, and they have an odd way of aging with us, morphing into deepening wells of wisdom.
One of several reasons for which Sisyphus was condemned, was tricking Thanatos, god of the underworld, by chaining him in place and effectively halting the death of all mortals for a time. He also, before his final death, instructed his wife to not perform the usual burial ritual, and used her breach of duty as a pretext for Hades to let him return to the land of the living to punish her.
Hey, don’t hate the player, hate the game. But I digress.
In the context of a spirit so free and wily that he’d go to such great lengths to cheat death, a punishment of life without purpose and effort without payoff, a life that knows no end but monotony, is truly insufferable.
For a truer tragedy than losing legends of light before their time - Robin Williams, James Dean, Nightbirde - is to grant them life, yet suffocate their passion. The power to choose passion, purpose, and dare I say happiness, is a horrible responsibility, but a responsibility nonetheless.
Alas, there is a world for all of us that exists between a life of monotonous mediocrity and death with a capital D. A life of brilliance that exhibits unequivocal disdain for those two, binary options.
They Took the Goddamned Wheelchair
“You sit around gettin' older
There's a joke here somewhere and it's on me
I'll shake this world off my shoulders
Come on, baby, the laugh's on me
Stay on the streets of this town
And they'll be carvin' you up alright
They say you gotta stay hungry
Hey baby, I'm just about starvin' tonight
I'm dyin' for some action
I'm sick of sittin' 'round here tryin' to write this book
I need a love reaction
Come on now, baby, gimme just one look”
A Weightlessness trainee from tribes past, as well as a friend, has had a few years of Sisyphean churn - bad luck, curveballs, and more bad luck. The latest of which (which I hope she doesn’t mind me sharing, but I’d rather ask for forgiveness than permission in this case… she’s an avid reader of this newsletter, and a thoughtful one) was the burning down of her new apartment after several years of life without a stable environment.
She let me know, not in the form of belligerent diatribe, as would be reasonable, but in the form of gratitude for a parable we discussed in The Weightlessness Process program. As she sat in her car watching her apartment burn, she breathed, she remembered that life is full of fleeting moments and that nothing is permanent. And she chose to taste the strawberry.
And then she learned looters stole her husband’s wheelchair. The absurdity and pain inherent in life...
The Children Playing
Not long ago I was in need of a spark, and ventured to Arizona to see a shaman, of sorts.
Despite ongoing training, I began to feel a tension in my chest, and a faintness of breath that aren’t my norm. I wasn’t able to access fluid, deep breathing, the kind where the abdominals and intercostals relax and the lungs fully expand, in a couple months. And I could feel it was originating from my head, not my body.
The shaman I spent two days with was Mexican, and told me the Spanish word for magic mushrooms - los Ninos - 'the children playing.' While experiences on hallucinogens can vary considerably, as mine did even from the first to the second night, there is a gentleness to shrooms, a nurturing energy that creates a safe space for the children to play.
And in those hours children laugh with joy, they dig up old grudges and mend old wounds, they cry from kept pains, they wander down unwelcome alleys with new lessons and insights, and they hold up a mirror, showing you not what you want to see from the experience, but what you need to see.
With all my years of experience I still get stuck. And in those moments the temptation to hunker down and resist, to fight harder and break down barriers with unrelenting will, only serves to reinforce the body’s natural protection mechanisms - a tightening of tissue and a narrowing of thought - just to get you to tomorrow. When in reality we need to remember that we must die, to release fixed notions of self stemming from false notions of permanence, and to release the pressure valve with love and laughter.
And sometimes, inscrutably, we're fully aware of our stuck points and attachments, and even have the tools to address them, yet feel powerless to change… without a spark.
The next morning I awoke feeling ten pounds lighter, and I could breathe again.
You Can’t Start a Fire Without a Spark
“You can't start a fire
Sittin' 'round cryin' over a broken heart
This gun's for hire
Even if we're just dancin' in the dark
You can't start a fire
Worryin' about your little world fallin' apart
This gun's for hire
Even if we're just dancin' in the dark
Even if we're just dancin' in the dark
Even if we're just dancin' in the dark
Even if we're just dancin' in the dark
Hey baby”
Springsteen had been working on his 1984 album Born in the USA for two years. He was fed up with the process; he was bored; he was angry. And he thought the album was finished when his manager told him, “You need to write one more - a single.”
Springsteen had already written 70 songs for the album. He was Sisyphus straining under the boulder, unable to see beyond its edges to the distance left to the peak. He was my friend, watching her apartment burn to the ground, only to be ridiculed further by a stolen wheelchair.
The power to choose passion, purpose, and dare I say happiness, is a horrible responsibility, but a responsibility nonetheless.
That night, after being told he needed to push the boulder one more time, Springsteen raged against the world, and in a moment of despair… chose.
And he wrote Dancing in the Dark. (This, his version.)
He didn't whisper from the depths, he sang... and he danced.
If this letter finds you in a less than weightless place - tired, hungry, hurting - then take today. Take today to feel your retched, miserable state, fully. Let it wash over you like waves on sand, until every print and imperfection is filled and exposed to the sting of salt.
You are Sisyphus, condemned.
You are Springsteen, enraged.
Let it all bleed out.
And when you’re done, let the children play.
And write your damn song.
Be weightless,Tom Fazio
Weightlessness | Mind-Body Performance
I hope this provides a spark for someone in need. But don't let a spark replace enduring fire. All of us need an impetus, but we also need a process that sustains, empowers, and liberates.
The Weightlessness Process - 12-week mind-body transformation program.